


Easy Left Me a Long Time Ago

by thegrumblingirl



Category: Almost Human
Genre: John's beginning to see that, M/M, Pre-Slash, alcohol isn't the answer kids, bit of a rambling piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2014-02-28
Packaged: 2018-01-14 03:08:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1250455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrumblingirl/pseuds/thegrumblingirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I thought we agreed this was awkward,” John murmured over the rim of his glass. Judging by the fact that he still felt the need to point this out, Dorian concluded that it would be a few more drinks before John started making even less sense than usual.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Easy Left Me a Long Time Ago

**Author's Note:**

> [Inkie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/countermeasures) started talking about that scene from _Beholder_ where Dorian suggested to go out with John and watch him drink, and how John pointed out how awkward that was the last time they tried that.  
>  So then we pictured John clinging to Dorian when he had to take him home, and from there it was only a very small leap to me suggesting that John would be handsy with Dorian when drunk.  
> And this is what happens when Inkie asks me to write stuff and idiot me says, "ok."  
> This fic runs independently from the other Almost Human fics I've sorted into series.  
> Title taken from Pearl Jam's _Pendulum_.

“I thought we agreed this was awkward,” John murmured over the rim of his glass. Judging by the fact that he _still_ felt the need to point this out, Dorian concluded that it would be a few more drinks before John started making even less sense than usual.

It had taken Dorian a full ten minutes to figure out what had gotten John in such a mood the day after they had arrested Eric Lathem. Memories of a love lived and lost, and the quiet drifting away of whatever vague notion of hope had been tempting John in his tentative (and invariably fumbling) attempts at a connection with Valerie. Dorian had felt the stirrings of selfishness that morning.

He didn’t begrudge Valerie her affection for John, nor John his response. Had it been them on that date, not the Chrome Stahl had met during the investigation (Dorian made a mental note to run a background check, just in case — for her, not for John), Dorian would have been happy for them. But such as it was, he preferred sitting next to John in a bar, watching him drink.

Dorian was a cop, built to serve the city and its people. Selfish desires weren’t what he thought of when he hurled himself into elevator shafts to protect hostages (and John), they weren’t what guided his actions when he drained his charge to the point of shutdown to save innocent people (and John).

When John walked into the station the morning after a night he had most likely spent brooding, set apart from the crowds, staring into the dark (real or the one he imagined inside of himself), Dorian had felt the familiar urge to cheer him up, to tease him, to do what he could to make John smile. He knew those smiles well, especially the slightly self-conscious ones, the ones that surprised Dorian because they made John seem so unused to being indulged, no matter how good he was at striding about as if he owned the place. Dorian wanted to see John smile like that, through his long lashes, quiet and releasing the tension coiled in his shoulders, and he wanted to know that it was him causing those smiles. He wished he could have insisted on not letting John go out alone the night before, even if… Even if Valerie hadn’t had that date.

Dorian had paused momentarily in his data scan, had moved his head in surprise, as if cocking an ear to hear his own thoughts better. Involuntarily, his eyes had shifted towards John, sitting at his desk not three feet from him, finishing that report. As though sensing his sudden movement, John turned his head and looked up at him.

“Something wrong?” He leaned to the side, peering at the left side of Dorian’s face. “No discoface. You ok?” John’s expression shifted minutely, the look in his eyes darkening, but the change only lasted a second. If Dorian had had to blink, he would have missed it — but he saw John willing himself to push it away. When he spoke, John’s voice was soft, quiet so as not to carry across the bullpen. “You’re not having another flash, are you?” This time, Dorian did blink — he was almost human, after all. John was concerned, worried even, had to be if he wasn’t coating it in sarcastic reproach and a quip about faulty robots.

“No, I’m fine,” Dorian reassured him. “Something just occurred to me that… I should talk to Rudy about. Probably. Maybe later.”

“Robot trouble?” John asked with a more teasing air, and Dorian knew full well he had just been treated to a (thankfully mocking) reference to how part of the male population still chose to deal with female health. He shot John a look and went back to the holographic case files in front of him. He was about to immerse himself when John wheeled his desk chair closer to him. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a hand reach out, fingers stretched as if to brush his sleeve, but then it was pulled back at the last second.

“Hey,” John’s voice rumbled instead, and Dorian inclined his head a fraction to signal he was listening. “You can always talk to me, too, you know that, right? I can’t fix your circuits except perhaps with bubble gum, but...”

“I know, John. Thank you.” Dorian knew the reply sounded stilted and a little formal ( _robotic_ , the traitorous voice in his head supplied — and when had he started hearing voices?), but somehow it seemed to do the trick. Dorian looked at John again, who smiled at him, just a little.

It was one of those smiles John sometimes tried to hide when Dorian did something that betrayed his inexperience with human interaction, or when he insisted on reciting numbers to their sixth decimal just because he could, because it was how he _did_ things.

Dorian had gone back to the files, and John had gone back to the reports. Looking back at John surreptitiously after a few minutes, Dorian had noted the decreased tension in John’s back.

And now, a couple of days later, they were sitting in a bar, and Dorian was watching John drink. He had insisted, this time — but, to be fair, John hadn’t taken too much persuading. Valerie had watched and laughed as Dorian had begun mock-dragging John out of the bullpen, and as John had turned the tables on him, grabbing the back of his jacket and bundling him through the door. Once they’d been out the door, John’s hand had lingered on his back for a moment, but then disappeared when Detective Paul had come walking towards them, arriving to start his shift.

“Taking your robot home, Kennex?”

“Taking my partner drinking, Paul,” had come the acid reply. “Big difference. But then, you’re not quite tall enough to see that, are you?”

Dorian glared at him from the side. Detective Paul could do with a different attitude, but he really couldn’t help being short.

“Yeah, well, and you’re actually so lonely that you keep forgetting your ‘partner’ can’t ingest any fluids. Being a Synthetic and all,” Paul shot back, completely unfazed by the jab at his limited height. Dorian sighed inwardly as the two men showed signs of settling into ‘square off’ mode.

“John,” he said quietly. “Shift’s over. Let’s go.”

A muscle in John’s jaw ticked once. Twice. “Fine. You better not be here when we get in tomorrow morning, Paul.” With that, he pushed past the other detective, walking ahead to his car. Dorian cast a fleeting glance at Paul, but found only resentment, so he quickly followed his partner, while Paul marched towards the entrance.

Getting into the car, Dorian couldn’t help but say it. “You do realise that digs about his height are probably the least effectual insults ever, right?”

“He’s still a tiny bastard,” John countered as he started the car. “And I’ll keep telling him that until he stops calling you a Synthetic. So, basically, until we either retire or get killed.”

Dorian’s mouth twisted. “You’re wasting your breath. But thanks.”

John merely grunted in reply. Briefly, Dorian entertained the notion of congratulating him for his otherwise excellent vocabulary, considering he was a Neanderthal, but for once he bit back the impulse.

At the bar, however, holding his tongue was becoming increasingly difficult.

Yes, watching John drink while he himself simply had no such thirst was a little awkward. But then, he knew John was drinking to sooth an ache, and Dorian was starting to have an inkling of what that felt like. Something had settled inside himself the day he’d met John, something that had grounded him, given him a purpose beyond serving the city. An intrinsic need to keep John safe, to make sure he was happy and protected had somehow been right there, along with his one wish to be a good police officer. Dorian had accepted that as part of his programming, a necessity to find someone he was comfortable with to guide him, to learn from. So many things about being human, about emotions and thoughts, pain as well as joy, Dorian had learnt from John. But it had become more than that as over time John had opened up to him, had told him things. John had been the one to stick with him during the search for Danica, John had insisted that Dorian would be fine, that he was strong enough to cope. Even as Dorian feared that he was cracking up, John had looked him in the eye and told him that the flashes didn’t mean he was going crazy.

John Kennex believed in him, trusted him. The man with the synthetic leg had returned from Rudy’s lab one afternoon, determination blazing in his eyes, pulled the DRN aside and told him that he’d be ok. _“I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”_

Now, it was Dorian’s shoulder that was keeping John upright as they talked. In half an hour, he would suggest that he take John home, John would refuse. In an hour, John would let Dorian pull him up, would let Dorian wind an arm around his waist and guide him out the door.

“Did you talk to Rudy?” The words were coming out slurred, but still recognisable, and John wasn’t going cross-eyed when he looked at Dorian intently from the side. He wasn’t puke-his-guts-out drunk, either, not as badly as his unsteady footwork suggested. But the drink messed with his head, and the mess in his head undermined the love-hate relationship John had going with his leg.

“About what?” Dorian tightened his grip a little as they walked across the parking lot and found the asphalt a little slippery with rain.

“About the thing. In the bullpen, when you were suddenly staring at me. Robot troubles,” he repeated, miming quotation marks with his right hand. Dorian felt the back of his neck go warm.

“No, I didn’t. Wasn’t that important.” He tried shooting John an assuring smile, but even in his inebriated state, John looked wary.

“Everything’s important,” he said, stopping abruptly. “Everything, Dorian. I get if you don’t want to talk to me about it, but you gotta talk to someone.”

Dorian raised a brow. “Says the man who prefers brooding over telling anyone what’s wrong. Who refuses to see a psychologist even though his synthetic limb still gives him trouble sometimes.”

“Leg hasn’t cut out on me for weeks. Last time was when you were out for maintenance for two days after the power outage.”

“Your leg is only one part of the problem, John, you know that.” Dorian was vaguely aware they must look peculiar, standing there outside the bar, halfway to the car, with his arm around John’s waist and their bodies so close. “And it’s not about not wanting to talk to you. It’s just something I have to wrap my mind around first.”

John nodded, with the solemn air of someone who’d had a lot to drink and was now ready to take on the big questions of life, the universe, and everything. “Go do your wrapping. And keep away from my leg.”

Dorian scoffed. “Not a chance.”

John laughed, his eyes slowly leaving Dorian’s, his gaze sliding towards the ground. He inclined his head, almost as if to rest it on Dorian’s shoulder, but he halted somewhere in the middle, his hair nearly brushing Dorian’s cheek. “Take me home?”

Dorian nodded. “Come on.”

The drive to John’s house was mostly quiet, only interrupted by John occasionally mumbling something under his breath. Dorian could have amped up his sensors to hear, but he firmly kept a lid on his curiosity. John wasn’t sober, and therefore likely to say something sober John would have rather kept to himself. It was his problem if he said it to Dorian’s face, but the DRN wasn’t about to listen in on what the detective was muttering into the collar of his jacket. His thoughts were interrupted by John’s hand on his arm.

“Dorian, about… about the things you said. About me waking you up. I know I acted like it was nothing, but it wasn’t. Not nothing. I was gone, too, and when I woke up, there was no-one there. Not even enough memories to know what was missing in the first place. But then, there was you, and you… you woke me up. You woke me up, too.”

Fortunately, the roads were mostly empty, because Dorian stared at John for so long that they’d have probably had a terrible accident on the tightly packed streets of daytime LA. John looked back at him, his hand slipping from Dorian’s arm.

“Dorian?” He sounded uncertain, almost shy. Quickly, Dorian smiled.

“I’ve got you, John. I’ve got you.”

John’s brow wrinkled, looking unsure if that had been the answer he’d been looking for, but at length, the frown eased and he smiled back. “I know.”

Dorian, still a little thrown by John’s… apology? declaration? explanation? … was even more aware of their proximity now than he had been outside the bar. John was leaning into him as they walked towards his front door, and as they went up the steps, John drew his own arm back and draped it over Dorian’s shoulder. Putting his free hand on Dorian’s chest, John halted their progress.

“I may be drunk, but I meant what I said. And I’m pretty sure that I’ll remember this in the morning, but if I don’t, you have to tell me.”

“Why?”

To his mild surprise, John smiled. Then, he lifted his hand and — Dorian had to blink again — tapped a fingertip against Dorian’s nose. “Because you deserve better than a partner who can only tell you something like that when he’s unsteady on his synthetic leg.”

If Dorian’s answering smile was a little shaky, John didn’t let on.

The next morning, Dorian arrived at their desks and found John’s chair empty. He’d seen his car outside, however, so he had to be in. (Dorian had put his discoface on and hailed a passing patrol car to hitch a ride back to the station after depositing John in his bed, gently helping him taking off his leg and plugging it in to charge in the pod.) Dorian was about to simply go through the reports that had come in overnight, when a post-it on top of a pile of files caught his eye.

_Thanks for waking me up. - J_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing, I get nothing.


End file.
